Antoni Porowski, your friendly neighborhood foodie

The Foellinger Great Hall was filled to the brim, yet Antoni Porowski managed to make the gathering seem personal as he wove anecdotal stories about his childhood and cracked jokes during his stop in Champaign-Urbana, one of the many on a 13 city book tour.

Porowski is on Netflix’s show Queer Eye, where the “Fab Five,” five lifestyle experts, make over the lives of others. He is the food and wine expert, yet he often goes deeper in the show and attempts to find food that will elicit positive memories from the past to create comfort.

Porowski’s success on Queer Eye led him to write his newly released book, Antoni in the Kitchen, about the place where he “could tell [his] story.” His book blends recipes and memoir, where each of his recipes “had a story behind it.”

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Porowski was born in Montreal to Polish immigrant parents.

In his elementary school, they had a tradition called the “buffet des nations, or buffet of nations. Parents would go to the cafeteria and bring food from their respective countries and everyone would share a meal together,” Porowski told the crowd.

This tradition “set the precedent for [his] career, just being incredibly obsessed with food.”

When Porowski was 12, his family moved to West Virginia. The clash of cultures led him to feel “a kind of embarrassment or shame, like he did something or was something wrong so [he] tried to squash anything that was Polish for a really long time.”

It wasn’t until Porowski moved back to Montreal for college and was working in a Polish restaurant that he “found him community,” and was able to embrace his culture.

Queer Eye became a platform for Porowski to connect with people and have moments that are “so incredibly powerful.”

Porowski explains that Queer Eye is not to simply educate and generate discussions but to focus on helping people on an individualistic and personal basis. “I’m here to help [the Queer Eye contestant]. I’m here for you to ask questions and figure out how to be of service.”

The way to a person’s heart must truly be through the stomach because Porowski has captured many. To end the night, Porowski demonstrated how to make a Roman Frisee Salad, a recipe he discovered while wandering Italy with a past boyfriend. It’s simple, fun, and healthy, similar to the ingredients of a positive life.

Though much of Porowski’s work focuses on food, it is the impact on people’s lives that is most important to him. “Really important things can start really small. In the way we treat other people, how we treat ourselves. If you want to leave a mark don’t focus so much on trying to change the world but know what you’re passionate about and what gets you really excited.”